Sunday, October 21, 2018

Back in the old days I would play our kids, and sometimes even myself, to sleep using C's old plywood topped El Degas guitar to plunk out lullabies and super slowed down versions of tunes from Nebraska and such.

Anyway...

Our kids are both pretty much grown and gone a good chunk of the time now.

Which means that I play my guitar to an empty room most bedtimes these days.

Which is why the following lines, from Guy Clark's 'Stuff That Works' slays me:

"I got an old guitar won't ever stay in tune

I like the way it sounds

In a dark and empty room"

And, in case you haven't guessed it, once something like that gets its hooks in me I pretty have to play it over and over and over again.

So, here's my El Degas-assisted version of Mr. Clark's tune, which, bombasted up a little, probably could have been a Chevy truck commercial if Bob Seger hadn't already cashed in...

Saturday, October 13, 2018

There's this guy, Sam Quinones, who used to write for the LA Times awhile back.

Since then he's done good in the way I always wished Oscar Zeta Acosta had kept on doing after I first read not Fear and Loathing but, instead, ....This.

Anyway, one of the good things Mr. Quinones has done is write a book called 'Dreamland' wherein he describes his travels through Midwestern American states of both mind and reality to give witness (and insight) to the greed-driven opioid crisis that is wiping out entire towns there.

Which, tangentially at least, brings me to Sarah Blyth, who is someone I liked as a Parks Commissioner awhile back and who is now running as an independent for Vancouver Council.

Last September (2016), a trio of women pitched a tent facing into a back alley near the intersection of Columbia Street and East Hastings. They set up a couple of tables there with a basket of clean needles and a supply of naloxone, a drug that’s used to reverse the effects of an opioid overdose.

Sarah Blyth, Ann Livingston, and Chris Ewart called it the Overdose Prevention Society. Since the arrival of fentanyl, there had been a lot of overdoses in that alley. And so in potential violation of Canada’s Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, they created a relatively safe space where people could inject drugs and where, in the event of an overdose, there would be someone there to revive them.

Three months later, B.C. health minister Terry Lake issued a ministerial order that instructed health authorities across the province to establish sites for drug users just like the tent that the Overdose Prevention Society pitched in that Downtown Eastside alley.

“I woke up yesterday at 4 o’clock in the morning and was thinking about the pop-up tent,” Lake told the Straight in an interview that month. “So we pulled the team together quickly, Vancouver Coastal had some plans in place. And so we just expedited everything.”

Within a week, there were more than 15 overdose-prevention sites operating in cities throughout B.C. Since then, staff at those locations have reversed hundreds of overdoses. No one has died at any of the sites...

A progressive trouble maker that can get things done and turn around someone like Terry Lake for the good of all?

Gosh.

That sure is someone I want in my city's council chambers.

OK?

****

Now.

Getting back to that very troubled state of mind that Mr. Quinones, who's more bloggorific stuff shows up occasionally on the left sidebar by the way....

Here's a wee bit of a 'book-on-tape' on that subject written by the always steady Craig Finn:

_____Mr. Finn comes to town next Friday night, Oct 19th...Turns out that's election eve 'round here...You can hear Ms. Blyth, in her own words, in long form, on Mo Amir's podcast...Here.